I’m Kaitlyn Gelb, the first human to understand people. If you’re writing a history book, that’s not Caitlin with a c. It’s Kaitlyn, k-a-i-t-l-y-n.
Anyway, everybody knew the people, as they called themselves, didn’t come here to take over. Gah! They had traveled impossible distances instantly using their sparkly amethyst circles. They could have easily popped in and conquered us. Like before lunch. They could have ground us up and served us over chips drizzled in queso. Yummy us! But that’s not what these aliens were about – anyway, they’re vegans.
The people came by the thousands. They swarmed all over London and Tokyo and New York and Dildo, Canada and Condom, France and – you get the idea. They hit Atlanta too. I don’t think it was for our club scene or fried okra. They wanted to hang with humans. That was pretty obvious.
What no one understood was the true nature of these off-worlders or what they were looking for. They never revealed their home planet or dimension or website. The United Frikkin Nations formed a commission – seven old White dudes and one old Black lady with thirty PhDs between them – to study the people, but they didn’t figure out much.
The people tended to pair off into teams, poke around in humans’ business, then pop back to wherever they came from. Scientists could find no specific reasons for their comings or goings.
Within a few years, the people had started to lose interest in us humans. Earth was no longer a go-to destination. A few hundred still popped in annually, but the novelty had clearly worn off. Our phones were primitive. Our cars and planes were clunky. We bored them. And that worked both ways. When Pinkie attached herself to me, I barely got a bump in followers. Your bestie is a big pink thing from another world? Yawn. I’ve got royals to stalk. Later.
When I say Pinkie attached herself to me, I don’t mean attached as in leeches. The people aren’t that kind of alien either. I mean, one day she was there, with me wherever I went. No explanation. I’d wake up and she’d be in the corner of my bedroom. Private time in the bathroom? There she was. Suddenly I had a second mother, always in my business.
My height, she was fuchsia and ivory with a musky-smelling coat, soft like velour. Her eye ring, twenty or so, ran all the way around her head, if the pinto bean shape on top of her blobby body was a head. Her limbs came and went. They were dexterous pods of a sort, able to grip and even work a keypad. They were there, then the people just sucked em back in.
I called her she. I tried “they,” but Pinkie insisted, “I am not plural. Not singular.” Pinkie didn’t protest my use of “she,” but I got the sense I was off target.
In any case, Pinkie got bored with my daily routine pretty fast as well.
“Fun,” she would say in her precise and oddly accent-free voice. More a command than a question. “You need fun. I want to watch.”
Fine. I invited Darby and Janiyah to my apartment for some Gummies. They worshipped flannel and denim and were totally into each other. Not me. We were just buds. Anyway, we indulged and talked about the deeper meanings to be found in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. It was a trippy, farty night.
None of this fazed Pinkie at all. It was nice to have someone who didn’t judge. But their company didn’t satisfy her either.
“Fun,” she repeated a few nights later. Did I mention, the people don’t say much. There’s a lot of silent fuzzy blob time.
Fine. I was so bored, I pulled out a toy and showed her. “This what you want to see?”
“Yes, Kaitlyn with k y.” I would swear one red-in-red eye winked at me. Did people have a sense of humor?
So… I mean, in the name of intergalactic enlightenment and all, I gave her what she asked for. I thought we put in a fine performance, me and King Dong. Everything went swimmingly for a minute or two. Pinkie stared at me blankly with about half-a-dozen of her red-in-red eyes. Then, she slumped. I could read her a little by that point. It was her way of saying “Meh!”
***
Friday came. I returned home from my shit job at the GameStop (so much for a liberal arts degree) to find Pinkie waiting. She’d visited the store a few times, tried some of the games, but found them super easy. So, she stopped following me to work.
Anyway, it was nice to have someone to come home to. It had been a while. Pinkie was my huge cat with too many eyes.
“Fun,” she said.
I was out of tricks.
“What?”
Pinkie reached into my purse and pulled out my phone. An extra digit extended from a pod and she punched up a list of lipstick night spots south of the airport.
“We’ve been out before. You’ve met my friends. You got bored. What are you look—”
“Meet someone,” she said.
Pinkie phoned an Uber – an action that was both exotic and banal at the same time – and we were on our way.
The place she chose looked like a rat hole, and I didn’t want to get out of the car. “Be brave for one minute, then you will be all right.” A long sentence for Pinkie, the words soothed my nerves. We stepped into The Rainbow Connection.
What a difference inside. Atmospheric lighting, red tablecloths, burnished mirrors everywhere. Some gay guy was playing plinky-plunk piano music. He was the only bio-male in the room. The customers looked past fifty and wealthy, wearing enough jewelry to make Tom Shane cum in his shorts. I’ve always had a thing for older ladies. Rich older ladies. Meheheheh. Gah! Down, girl!
I could feel the heat. These chicks might be all kinds of proper in public, but they came here to get freaky. I did not fit the scene, a tatted twenty-something with a nose ring, black nail polish, and a Brandi Carlile t-shirt hiding Wookie pits. And yet… if eyes were tongues, these ladies were tasting the forbidden fruit. I was dripping.
Pinkie led me past table after thirsty table. Some of the women stared while their dates shot me hot death with their eye-guns. It felt kinda cool. I was getting more attention here than I ever did in Little Five Points. We stopped at a corner booth with one lady sitting next to – my heart jumped – a person. This one was shades of Hyacinthe and teal. She (?) sat there, scoping out the rest of the room with her midnight blue-in-blue eyes.
Meanwhile, the woman was smoking a weird black-and-gold cigarette. Her lighter was slender and made of solid gold. She left it out where anyone could snatch it and run. She was an older lady, a few extra pounds and wrinkles, nice hair, totally bangable in a sicko Pornhub mommy-thing kinda way. I was staring. She was grinning.
“Sobranie Black Russians. Want one?” She held up the box and shook a cigarette out at me. I took it, not sure what else to do, so I bent down closer to that gold lighter. “I can’t reach that far. Either have a seat or suck the Black Russian raw.” Ooh! How that sent shocks through my undies. Nice.
I sat down and slid next to her, setting down the unlit cigarette and hoping she wouldn’t notice. I hated cigarettes. Pinkie took the outside of the booth, but kept her eyes on her purple comrade. Once, I thought I caught them doing something. Pinkie’s fuzz began to stand on end, and so did Purple’s.
I had other concerns. “Kaitlyn,” I began. “That’s with a k and –”
“Of course it is, dear. You can call me Maddie as long as you call my private number, and only after six.” Well, that was an interesting flex. The people must have thought so too, since both of them quivered.
The conversation went on for a bit. I asked about her person.
“Mine’s a scientist. I think yours is just a tourist.”
“How can you tell?”
“Something in the way they look at you.” I hadn’t noticed anything in Pinkie to suggest this.
“Fine. Let’s see. Do you have a pen?”
She reached into her clutch and pulled one out. “Montblanc Meisterstuck Solitaire Blue Hour,” she announced as if I knew what that meant. It was a pen.
I took a napkin and jotted down: N = R∗ × fp × ne × fl × fi × fc × L. The napkin tore a little, but it was readable. Hurray for nerds!
Maddie eyed it and glibly said, “You finished your homework. Gold star.”
Not wanting to show off, I didn’t tell her it was Drake’s Equation. That’s the one where you try to figure out how many intelligent species exist in the Milky Way. Pinkie and Hyacinthe had already blown away Fermi, who paradoxically whined that Goku, Dr. Zoidberg, and the Vogons were ghosting us, but scientists had been unable to get the people to comment on exactly how many sentient races populated our galaxy.
I looked at Hyacinthe. “Can you solve this?”
The two people in our booth looked at one another and at us. Finally, Hyacinthe said, “At least two.”
Gah! Thanks!
Over the next half hour, I got little useful info from anyone at our table. I did learn that Maddie was wearing Malmaison Bubinga Wood Glasses by Cartier and a Vera Wong evening dress, along with all the prices, including the lighter, which turned out to be Van Cleef & Arpels. I acted suitably impressed. “Very nice, holy shit” and that kind of thing. The glasses looked silly, out of date, but that lighter was cool. As for the dress, it suited a younger figure. I pictured it on the floor of Maddie’s boudoir.
I didn’t know if the people could read my mind, but horny old ladies could. “Want to get out of here?” Maddie asked. It was an old, long-cracked code, and I was glad to hear it. She wasn’t my usual prey, but it had been way too long, so my appetite was flexible. “We could go back to my place.”
I remembered our chaperones. “With an audience?”
“Morticia and Elvira watching? Could be fun.” I liked her names for our people buddies better than the ones I’d picked.
Her place turned out to be a five-bedroom, seven-figure home on East Morningside. She won it in the divorce after sleeping with her ex-husband’s law partner who tore him to pieces in court.
“So, which to you prefer?”
With a wry smile, she answered, “One’s needle points where it will. Sometimes, I like to give mine a spin. Oh, Barry’s not bad. Better than the ex, but not nearly as giving as a good woman.” Maddie was a woman of powerful appetites herself.
That first night together was fireworks and rose petals. No, I’m lying. It was sweaty, tumbly, spankin’ good fun.
The following week, we enjoyed a romantic candlelit dinner left there by the cook, who apparently set the table and jumped out the window before I had a chance to meet him. The meal was superb, apart from the meat, which I don’t eat. The salad was superb. So was the sex.
We watched old movies together. I enjoyed “Silkwood,” at least up to where I nodded off. She gave me some of her blouses, which I wore to please her. And I shared my stash, which was fun cause I got her seriously messed up. Ha.
By romp date number five, though, things were leveling off. Maddie suggested spicing it up a little. She’d outfitted one basement room as a suburban dungeon – fur-lined cuffs, oils, candles, a whip (the people seemed to enjoy that trick), and power toys that put mine to shame. “Because the kicks just keep gettin’ harder to find,” she sang. It was something from eons ago that I didn’t recognize.
When she called me the next time, I decided to bring a cheap bottle of wine and a few personal questions.
Maddie sent an Uber for Morticia and me. I won’t lie. I felt a twinge of something at the thought that my Kia could not be seen passing through the giant wrought iron gates of her mansion. “What would the neighbors think?” That you ordered carpet cleaning. Trust me, they know.
I let it pass. I was letting a lot of things pass. Until…
“Yes, that’s right. Right now, as we speak. She’s good. Better than you, loser. She knows how to find my—”
I looked up. “Gah! Who are you talking to?”
In the glow of her phone, Maddie was grinning ear to ear. “Barry. He loves this shit.” She pressed my head back down. “I didn’t tell you to stop.” Suddenly, I was a clown performing at the old folks home. From the phone came the unmistakable groan of a man climaxing. Odd. I’d imagined my first threesome would be more fun.
When I got home that night, I asked Morticia, “Am I her doormat? Am I letting her use me?”
“Yes.”
Morticia’s bluntness struck me as unexpectedly honest… and hurtful, but in a necessary way.
“Fine. What do you suggest?”
“Kaitlyn must stand up for Kaitlyn. Be strong.”
***
The following week, I got my chance. When we got to her place, we gathered in the parlor and, right there in front of the Renoir, I invited Maddie DuBois to march with me in the Atlanta Pride Parade and rally at Piedmont Park.
“No thank you, dear.” Just that. No hesitation. No reason. Just ‘no thank you.’ ‘Dear.’ Dear, like what you say to a child while petting her head.
“What? You could an inspiration to others.” Nothing. That is, Maddie did not respond. Morticia and Elvira were swaying back and forth. I felt my anger rise. I proudly declared, “I’m LGBTQIA+.”
“Good to meet you. I’m Maddie.” A snappy comeback. That’s what our relationship was to her, a stupid sit-com? I shrugged. She went on. “Be who you are, dear. You kids always want to identify yourself by what happens in bed. There’s so much more to you.”
I wanted to say, Like six-thousand-dollar glasses. Instead, I went with “I turned left at ‘you kids.’”
Morticia and Elvira were leaning in and… vibrating? Shivering? Something.
“I’m not trying to be your mommy here.”
“You’re not trying to be anything.” Tears were welling up. Gah! Stupid tear ducts!
She didn’t have to ask “What’s that supposed to mean?” She asked it anyway, and with a strong, clear tone that was the real message: you’re bouncing off my shields.
“Why don’t we – you and I – ever get together in daylight? You always drive me here in your car, and then after ten o’clock at night. Then you send me home in an Uber.”
Tears don’t go anywhere without snot, so there was plenty of that now too. I was worked up and getting in Maddie’s face. She moved back a step, and as she did, I noticed that Morticia and Elvira had drawn close to each other. Like get-a-room close.
“I use Uber for your convenience,” Maddie said. “I don’t know what you’re complaining about. I’m paying.” She was fully composed. It really hurt to see that. Was she enjoying this? “It’s a long walk back to your shabby little apartment.”
“Shabby?” How dare she call my shabby apartment shabby! Now I was pissed. I was either going to punch Maddie or tear her clothes off. Or both. Both could be good.
The battle continued. F-bombs flew freely. Maddie even lobbed a c-grenade my way, but I caught it and threw it right back in her face where it exploded. Take that, nazi ho!
Mid-insult, she stopped. “Wait. What is that smell?”
Maddie wasn’t kidding. Her oh-so-tastefully appointed front parlor suddenly stank like the gorilla enclosure at Zoo Atlanta. It was the people in the room. They’d turned their natural musk up to eleven. And they were budding. That’s the only word I could think of. Some new form of pods were bursting randomly from their bodies. These were tendrils ending in clusters of dewy pink blossoms. They were using them to probe one another, each pink tip finding a willing hole that also seemed to appear at random. They penetrated each other with a thmf-eej-thmff sound. So much sticky, wet penetrating!
“I think they’re fucking,” I ventured timidly.
“Yes, dear,” Maddie said casually. “They’re definitely fucking.”
Elvira was the more aggressive of the two, eliciting sharp trills from Morticia that may have been cries of pain, but she in no way showed signs of wanting to stop. I mean, as far as I could tell. It was kinda gross, but wicked hot. The flurf came flying off both of them in a pink and purple lint storm. You go, girls! Gah!
Maddie and I sat on the Louis XV loveseat, smoked a joint, and watched. I mean, it’s not something that comes your way every day. The people had serious stamina. We humans eventually picked up our rather loud discussion, which encouraged a second round of hanky-panky between the people in the room. They went at it with a gusto that was… well, unearthly.
It was then that I grasped their true nature. The people were not he, she, or they. She would do in the short-term, since the people were clearly female-dominant but tapping male components as needed. All that was only the reproductive component, however. There was more to them. Damn you, Maddie! In truth, each of the people was a wandering piece of some greater whole. They weren’t broken, just incomplete. The correct nomenclature, therefore, was “one needing one.” Morticia celebrated her being, only became fully alive, by joining with another, in this case Elvira. They had come to Earth to spice things up a bit. Like other people who paired off before them, they sought stimulation, a catalyst perhaps, to seal the deal. It was their version of an aphrodisiac. Some paired people must have gotten their jollies watching human sex. For others, work, or even art did it. These two had found the road to Nastyville by watching Maddie and me fight. You’re welcome.
Around one a.m., the people concluded their coitus celestial.
Elvira said nothing. Morticia looked at me, cooed, and said, “You are stronger than you know.”
I couldn’t remember Morticia ever showing that much warmth towards me. “Thank you,” I said. “Any other advice?”
“Go back to school and get a business degree, something practical.”
Ma!
The two people (somehow) called up one of their amethyst transit rings. As they stepped through, back to wherever it was they came from, Morticia made a sound, something between wind chimes and a baby duck snoring.
“She’s giggling,” Maddie observed wryly, “at us.”
“I guess they got what they wanted,” I said.
“Indeed,” Maddie agreed, lighting one of her black-and-gold cigarettes. “They better give us five stars.” She blew out an elegant stream of cancer. I really hated the stink of those things.
After I had calmed down, I took stock of the situation. Science be damned, we’d learned what the UN’s smarty-pants commission couldn’t: people got their space rocks off watching us have fun. Loud, hurtful fun. The kind that left permanent scars. The kind everyone wore.
Maddie and I looked at each other sheepishly. We tried to laugh, but it didn’t happen. We talked a little, but kept getting angry all over again. Finally, I punched up an Uber and went home.
My apartment stood empty. Shabby and empty.
***
It has become obvious Maddie and I are never going to be a couple. These days, we get together once in a while for playtime. I don’t like her, but I want her… know what I mean? Just to keep myself grounded, I snatched her gold lighter and stuck it in my purse. I could return it, but I won’t.
So, that’s where things are now. A new world every day. Gah!
Very smart people have argued for nearly a century about how many intelligent races might be out there in the stars. Is it thousands or just a few? No one knows. Do humans even count?
I know this: I have met a race from another world. They call themselves people, and I’m the only one who knows who the people really are. They’re the same as us. They’re jerks.
###
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